


what tomorrow will bring

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (the Jon/Sansa in this is one-sided and unrequited), Age Difference, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Benjen never went to the Wall, Brooding, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest, In which Benjen married Sansa and Jon broods, Jealousy, Older Man/Younger Woman, One-Sided Attraction, POV Multiple, Romance, Sparring, Uncle-Nephew Relationship, Uncle/Niece Incest, Voyeurism, Wedding Night, mentions of Rhaegar/Lyanna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-26 19:37:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: When Sansa is dishonoured by a visiting lord, her uncle offers to marry her to save her reputation, and though she takes herself to bed for three days in tearful protest, she finds her thoughts about her husband much changed by the time she is wedded and bedded.For Jon, his half-sister's marriage is only a curiosity until he returns from squiring in the south to find himself in love with Sansa and bitterly jealous of his uncle.





	what tomorrow will bring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittlestardustcaught](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlestardustcaught/gifts).



> a gift for alittlestardustcaught who accidentally prompted this fic by reblogging a gifset of Benjen and then helped me brainstorm some plot points.
> 
>  ****content notes** : this story contains an avuncular marriage between Benjen Stark and Sansa Stark, and Jon's pseudo-half-sibling incestuous feelings for Sansa, as well as accidental voyeurism. The Jon/Sansa in this story is one-sided and unrequited. The characters have been aged-up a little, so Sansa was in her late teens when she married Benjen.
> 
> and if you want visuals, I made a graphic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/176983304307/when-sansa-is-dishonoured-by-a-visiting-lord-her)

 

 

“You want my wife, you think I can’t see it?” his uncle says to him as he leans against the wall at a feast, as they both watch Sansa dance with a Manderly boy, her cheeks flushed, her carefree joy a thing of beauty. “You think that she’s too young for me, that she’s wasted on a wizened old man like me,” he says with a wry smirk, an easy arrogance that makes Jon feel like nothing more than a pup, that has Jon wanting to bare his teeth and shove him by the shoulders - but that would only prove his uncle right, wouldn’t it.

“I don’t,” he spits out.

“Oh, you don’t,” Benjen says, raising his cup to a Stark bannerman who passes. “You’ve been glowering at me since you arrived for some other reason then. If I was another man, boy, I might drag you outside and beat you for lusting after my wife, but we’re family and I know how it feels to be young and covetous," he says. 

"I'm not," he insists, bitter because he knows that what Benjen says is true, that if Jon had behaved thus in one of the keeps he visited in the south while squiring, then he would have been challenged to fight, if not clapped in chains and locked away. It doesn't make him feel any better that Benjen is kind to him, understanding, it makes him feel worse. It would have been easier if Sansa's husband had been a brute and Jon could have daydreamed about whisking her away from harm and drudgery, being her fair knight. But here Sansa is, joyful, happy, clothed in fine fabrics Benjen had brought back from his youthful travels, her waist glittering with a girdle of gold, a wedding gift Arya had reported to him in her letter to Jon, saying that she would have preferred a sword as a gift for her own wedding, not that she ever planned to marry.

He had been surprised to hear of the wedding, rushed as it was, but when Robb's letter reached him, having been delayed on its journey, and he heard about the lord who had dishonoured Sansa and how Benjen had come to her aid, he was heartsore for his sister, but pleased that she would have a kind husband, for Benjen had always been kind and genial, if a little bit wild at heart too, dangerous, in the way that made Jon look up to him as a boy. Now it is that wildness that makes Jon's gut burn. Does he treat Sansa as she ought to be treated, like a northman should, or has he brought back other tastes from his infamous travels in Essos or beyond the Wall—

"I know what it feels like, lad, to not be the heir or the spare,” his uncle says, interrupting his dark thoughts, putting a hand on Jon’s shoulder that he wishes he could throw off.

"You have the wrong of it, uncle," he says gruffly.

Benjen pats him twice on the shoulder, his hand, Jon thinks, like the paw of some large wolf. "Alright, lad." He steps away and then looks back, points the hand that holds his cup, "but don't think I don't see you, know you. Hide your thoughts better, Ser Jon, else you cause rumours that might hurt my wife," he adds, voice harder now, though his smile is easy as ever.

Jon nods, and hates himself for nodding like some cowed pup, hates himself for watching as Benjen downs the last dregs of his cup and strides across the floor to take Sansa from her last dancing partner and gather her in his arms as she beams up at him and throws her arms around his neck. As they circle the floor, Benjen's hands upon Sansa's small waist, his fingers tangled in the fine chain of her girdle, his head dipped so that he might better hear her happy murmur, as he leans to whisper something in her ear that makes her blush, Jon grits his teeth and curses, feeling a bitter maelstrom of jealousy and shame.

It is only since he returned that he noticed how very pretty his half-sister is, how womanly, how sweet and good, for he was only a boy when he left to squire. And though he has had his fair share of ladies lusting after him, of serving girls who flutter their eyelashes at him and squeeze past him in tight spaces; though he has had his fair share of offers, all refused; he feels as unwanted now as he did when he was a boy, sullen and small and awkward.

"You should dance, brother, and not spend your time glowering by the wall," Robb says, appearing by his side, "are you not a knight, do you not see several fair maidens without partners?"

Jon gusts a sigh.

"Yes, it is so very hard having to dance with so many girls, to be unmarried and free to take your pick," Robb jests.

"I'm not in the mood for dancing."

"You don't have the skill for it, you mean. Just what have they been teaching you down south if not to dance and look very fine in your jewelled armour."

"You know my armour isn't jewelled," he says, rolling his eyes and looking at Robb's broad smile. He has missed his brother, missed all his family, and that is what rankles him, for this was meant to be a happy return to Winterfell, not one marred by bitterness caused by his own bastard lusts.

"So they had no luck teaching you to dance either," Robb continues, "I see."

"If you think to goad me to dance, then you will not be successful."

"Oh, Jon, you have always been easily goaded."

Jon reaches out and grabs his brother, rubs his knuckles over his head as Robb laughs delightedly. He had wondered whether Robb, now that he is of age, might be more proper on his return, more like an heir is supposed to be, though Jon did not know quite what that would mean, but he is pleased to see him the same, pleased to find Arya and Bran and Rickon, who did not even remember Jon so young he was when he left, the same too. "I might ask you why you are not dancing with the very maidens you think I should, or is your betrothed a jealous woman?" Jon says as Robb rights himself, Ned having walked past them and shook his head indulgently at their youthful scuffle.

"I am too busy to dance," Robb says, lifting his chin imperiously.

"Oh, aye," Jon says, watching as Robb's eyes glide again toward pretty Alys Karstark who is whispering with her friends at the other side of the hall and eyeing up Robb with a maidenly shyness.

"It is good to have you home, brother," Robb says, slinging an arm around his shoulder. "You belong here, in Winterfell, by my side."

"Your mother might disagree with that," he says and Robb looks cross.

"She is happy to see you, just as father is."

Jon wants to roll his eyes. "She fears I will steal the keep and the title from under your nose, like some southron usurper."

"Will you?" Robb teases. "Should I not have welcomed you inside the gates? Are you a wolf come to steal my life from me?"

If he could but steal Benjen's life from him, he thinks distractedly, eyes drawn to the flaming banner of Sansa's hair as her husband spins her and then catches her tightly again, hand smoothing up her back. "Is Sansa happy?" he asks and Robb looks confused by the sudden change in conversation.

"Of course she is."

"Happy with her husband, I mean."

"Why wouldn't she be?" Robb asks, frowning as if the thought had never occurred to him before.

"I don't know, I suppose because it was not the marriage she wished for, that she had wished to go south and marry a prince, you know what she was like."

"He's a better husband than that boy who tried to take what was not his to have," Robb says darkly.

"I think I might have killed him had I been here," Jon admits.

"I almost did, they had to drag me back from him. It comforts me that a man like him won't last long at the Wall anyway," he says.

Jon thinks of the Wall which he visited with Benjen himself a few moons before he left to squire in the south, and of the squalid Castle Black and the thieves and rapists and murderers who lived inside its walls. There had still been a small part of him that had thought of becoming a member of the Night's Watch before that journey but afterwards he was only glad to leave.

It had been his father who had encouraged him to go south, to make something of himself away from Winterfell, to become his own man. And he had. He had felt his shoulders lifting as the moons went on, his sullenness easing as the possibilities of a new life opened up before him like a wide road where he could make his own path. He had thought that when he returned to Winterfell everyone might see how he had changed, become his own man, and yet here he was glowering at the back of a feast again, here he was coveting things he was not meant to have.

In the south he had seen with clearer eyes the burdens on liege lords, seen how difficult it was to keep bannermen happy, boundaries secure, and people fed; and had thought that Robb would soon have to bear the same load, and that for once Jon did not envy him. Yet here he was now, envying Robb for living here in Winterfell where Sansa would have call to visit from the nearby keep Ned had gifted his brother when they married. Benjen's travels had in part inspired Jon's own venture south and now he cursed such an impulse for if he had never left then— then, what, he thinks bitterly, then he might have stopped the boy who tried to dishonour her, then he might have watched as Sansa herself left to marry some prissy southron lord.

"Frowning again, brother," Robb sighs and grabs a cup from a passing tray, pushing it into Jon's hands. "I know our celebrations are nothing to the perfumed courts of the south."

Jon downs half the cup in one draft. "I missed ale," he says, "I never took to wine."

"Because you're a proper northman," Robb says, thumping him on the back so he almost chokes. "Now go dance, that's an order."

"An order?" he says with a dark smile, raising his eyebrows, feeling that old burning resentment that used to fire him up to fight against Robb with a viciousness that he knew frightened some who watched, fearful for their lord-to-be.

"Aye," Robb nods, "for I do not wish to be the worst dancer on the floor when I ask Alys to dance."

Jon snorts a laugh and bows his head sarcastically. "As my liege lord wishes."

And when Jon dances with the girls, and with the women whose husbands refuse to indulge their wives' love of dancing, he tells himself he will not look to her, that he will concentrate on the pleasure of having a willing woman in his arms, on being looked at with desire by those who had once ignored him, but he knows he is only lying to himself.

 

**

 

Sansa had not thought she could be so happy. She had not thought that when she was discovered in an alcove near the feast hall with the hands of that rogue underneath her skirts and his mouth attached to her neck like a lamphrey, her marriage prospects dashed in but a moment, that she would ever recover the barest sliver of the golden future she had lost, and yet here she is now, so full of joy she could burst.

It had been a moment of drunken folly - for she had not really wished to be touched like that, to be wanton, and yet the wine and his whispering words and her own confusing feelings had made her go with him when he pulled her by the hand from the feast, and though she certainly would not have let it get further than it did, it was true that she was not doing a very good job of pushing him away at the time, and a part of her had been enjoying his mouth there on her neck; and yet when she told her father this in the middle of her crying fit he had only got angrier and said that it was not her duty to push him away, that the man should never have presumed to touch her in the first place; although her mother did agree with her, and was angrier than she had ever been, scolding Sansa for being so careless, so slatternly, and had said that the fault lay with her.

That had been the very worst thing, how she had disappointed her mother, that, and the damage to her family's honour, the dashing of all her hopes - there had been so very many worst things about those days, she remembers.

And when her father had come to her and told her that she would be marrying Benjen; her uncle Benjen who had lately been abroad with the barbarians in Essos and journeying through Dorne, which her mother had always said was a land of lusts and bastardy; her uncle Benjen who was her uncle and almost as old as her father, and not the golden prince she had dreamed would whisk her away from the gloomy north; she had fainted clean away and woken up a few moments later to her father frowning over her as Old Nan tutted and wiped her brow with a cloth. But not even such a reaction would sway her father, nor the arguments of her mother who wished, Sansa had overheard with horror, for Sansa to become a septa.

"Is it not better to marry Benjen than be sent to a motherhouse?" Robb had said as he sat by her bed to which she had taken in protest - though it was a protest that only lasted three days, for she was still a dutiful girl and she did know, beneath all her fluster about her plans being dashed, how much her actions could damage her family's standing and ruin her sibling's prospects.

"Should you like to marry Lysa then?" she had said spitefully and Robb had screwed his face up and said, "it's not the same."

"It is."

"Sansa," Robb sighed, stroking her hair back from her face. "He'll be good to you, and you shall have a keep of your own to be lady of, and an honoured place here in the North. Your children shall be Starks."

Her children, in the chaos of the last few days she had spared little thought to _that_ idea.

What other option did she have, was the knowledge that lay heavy in her stomach that week, like a great weight pinning her here to the north that she had wished so dearly to leave behind.

Benjen had arrived several days later and Sansa had hidden away in her rooms, dressed in the velvet gown belonging to her mother that she had coveted for years and which felt like a gift soured when her mother had handed it to the maids this morning. She would have to meet him at some point, she knew that, but she felt panicked and almost frightened, not because she thought him some brute, but because this man was to be her _husband_. He was older than her, he knew more of the world, he was bearded and gruff and so much larger than her—

Her panicked thoughts, her pacing up and down her room, had been interrupted by a knock on the door and then the door was slowly pushed open, and when she saw the man in question there, with his kind eyes and broad shoulder and the beard just like her father's and the neat black jerkin he had changed into from his travelling clothes, she had turned her back to him and bit her lip, blushing and trembling.

"Sansa," he had said softly, "are you well?"

"I am, my lord," she had said, voice shaking.

"But you do not wish to look at me," he teased kindly.

"My apologies," she said and turned back around, dipping into a curtsey and staring at the laces of his jerkin.

"Sansa," he said again and came closer, putting a hand on her shoulder and lifting her chin gently with the other. He looked sorrowful and so very kind it made her want to cry. "If you do not wish to wed me, I shall not, we shall find you another husband."

She shook her head. She knew that there were several bannermen's sons who might be eager to wed her, third sons or first sons of grasping minor lords, but a man she knew would be far preferable to that, a man who was family and would treat her thus.

"Then you agree to be my wife?" he asked, and something inside of her had quivered at that phrase, _his wife,_ even as the rest of her was only apprehensive.

"I do, my lord."

He smiled and chucked her under the chin. "Then, my lady," he said, "we have a wedding to arrange, and no doubt your mother has a lot of thoughts on the manner of proceedings," he sighed knowingly, a twinkle in his eye, and she bit her lip lest she smile. It was said that where her father was quick to glowering, Benjen was quick to smiling, though both could be just as fierce as the other on the battlefield.

And thus had she agreed to wed him, and thus had the last week of her maidenhood been spent - with tears and nervous shaking, with smiles coaxed from his gentle teasing and wry comments on life at Winterfell, with nights spent awake wondering about what was to come, holding her breath as she thought of the _bedding_ , and with days hurriedly sewing her bridal stockings and sitting before her mother and dutifully listening to her mother's pronouncements as to what her conduct should be as a wife and lady of her own keep, trying not to wince at the anger that she still could hear in her mother's voice.

She had been pleased by Benjen's wedding gift of a golden girdle and it went some way to soothing the disappointment she felt at marrying in front of the heart tree and not in the royal sept of the Red Keep as she had once dreamed. Jeyne had picked her flowers to weave in her hair and later as they danced, her new husband had told her how she looked like some pretty forest spirit, that he had never thought he should have a bride as beautiful as her, and kissed her on the cheek, drawing a blush to her face.

He was a man grown, her husband, she had known that of course, and yet something about dancing, about the confidence and ease of how he held her and swept her around the room, something about the glimmer in his eyes that said he knew exactly what was to come after the wedding feast, made her breathless and wanting, made her want to swoon.

There were some guests who were unhappy about the match, unsettled by her marrying her uncle, but most were pleased to have her remain a Stark, she knew, to have no southron man come north to steal away the north's jewel, and many were glad to see Benjen finally marry and settle down after his rootless wanderings, not least of all her father who she had overheard saying just this to Catelyn.

Ned had forbidden a proper bedding ceremony and few argued against him with the memory of Sansa being groped by that rogue only a fortnight ago, and so they deposited her in her husband's bedchambers still fully clothed, with Benjen being pushed through the door a moment later slightly more worse for wear, jerkin tugged off and hair askew.

"Are you well?" he had asked her again when they had been left alone, and after he had opened the door and shouted for the crowd to go back to their feast, and she had nodded and blown out a shaking breath.

"If you do not wish—" he had begun to say.

"I do—"

"You wish me to lay with you tonight?" he said, his plain words making her blush further.

She nodded and in a moment he was before her, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her at first carefully and then, when she responded eagerly, with more force, tilting her head so that he might lave his tongue over hers and teach her how a husband and wife might kiss behind closed doors.

He stroked her waist, her sides, through her gown as he kissed along her bared shoulders and then he circled her and unlaced her gown with nimble fingers as she gasped for air, her stomach trembling when he called her sweet girl, when he said that she was beautiful and lovely and that he would show her how good this could be.

When her gown was pooled at her feet he had nudged her arms to lift and then pulled her shift over her head and turned her on the spot, heated eyes roaming across her bare skin before his hands reached to touch her and she melted in his arms, fingers scrabbling at his own tunic, though she was not brave enough to let them venture south to his breeches. He had stripped himself of his clothes and pushed her to sit on the end of the bed as she let herself look her fill of him - of the handful of scars across his muscled form; of the pelt of hair on his chest; of his thick, furred thighs and his manhood standing proud between them.

He had smirked at her maidenly shock and then knelt before her to slip her smallclothes free and stroke his hand there between her legs as she trembled and fell back on the bed. It was as if she was some instrument, she remembers thinking hazily, and he was the accomplished musician whose fingers knew just how to play her, as she moaned and writhed, eyes skittering away from his hot gaze, and then he had bent his head to put his _mouth_ on her, shocking her and making her clutch his head in her hands before she cried out at the dizzying pleasure that sprang from the motions of his lips and tongue, writhing on the bed like a wanton, gasping and moaning as he drew her towards some wondrous blissful peak.

And then, as she tried in vain to catch her breath, he had crawled up over her and kissed her, drawing her legs up around his hips as he thrust inside of her and made her his, as her nails dug into his back and he soothed the brief hurt with circles of his hips and with sweet words murmured close to her ear.

She had been told by her septa that a woman's duty to her husband was something to be endured, but a few moments of unpleasantness that would soon result in a child, yet that first night with her husband was not over in a moment, nor was it unpleasant. It must have been hours that he loved her, that he spent teaching her how their bodies could be brought to raptures, and she felt so wrung out afterwards that she feared she might never walk again, words which she murmured to her new husband and which made him roar with laughter and say that if that was so then he should be happy to spend hours of his day keeping her company in bed.

There was more laughter than she had imagined that night, happy laughter, gentle teasing that helped smooth over her awkward nerves, and as her husband finally slipped into a quietly snoring sleep she had lain awake startled with the joy she felt, as if she, she thought a little nonsensically, she was some small animal who had been caught in a trap only to find out that she was not to be some man's feast but his dearest pet instead.

She had been so happy, so consumed with her budding feelings for her husband, that she had not even had the thought to be sad at leaving Winterfell for the northern keep her father had gifted them, cheerily waving her parents and siblings goodbye as she sat on the horse beside her husband's. It was only a few weeks into settling into her new home when she began to miss them, to find the halls quiet and her days longer even though she had more than enough things to do to get things in order - to go over the books with her husband and talk with her new cook and hire servants, to arrange for rooms to be aired and cleaned and repairs made to tapestries and furniture and rugs, to host feasts for her new neighbours; just as her husband was busy with his own affairs, with ordering repairs to the walls and glass to replace the broken roof of the glass gardens, with hiring a master-at-arms and a smith to replace some of the armour and swords rusting in the ramshackled armoury.

And yet the time she spent with her husband, the dinners and breakfasts, the _nights_ , helped to soothe that ache, as did the presents he gifted her. For he had brought back many wonders from his travels over the years, and admitted to her that he had also often entered jousts and tournaments in disguise, winning prizes and sacks of coin. She was filled with awe the first time she entered his solar after the chests and boxes had been properly unpacked - to see the stacks of exotic fabrics and the chests of jewels and trinkets, to brush her finger over the strange statues and carved objects on the mantelpiece, the jugs and cups and bowls of metalwork and bronze and clay. There were strange weapons propped in the corner of the room, frightful masks, and stacks of parchment and books of varying size and composition. And from this room of delights he would emerge with gifts for her - necklaces of gold, bracelets of silver, threads of every colour, and fabrics so fine she was hesitant to touch them, books of romances in languages neither of them could read and illuminated with pictures that made her sigh with their beauty, beaded slippers and even a handheld mirror inlaid with green stones.

She had never thought that such riches could be hidden away in the north and though she worried that her love of his gifts meant that she was spoiled, it seemed that he did enjoy spoiling her, smiling when she gasped with wonder and kissing her lustily after he fastened every new necklace or bracelet.

His gifts might have been fine, and his manner towards her honourable and chivalrous, but he also had a northern roughness about him that she surprised herself by enjoying - his thick beard and his calloused hands, the way he downed half a cup of ale in one gulp before pulling her up to dance, the afternoons he would stride inside after a ride on his horse or sparring in the training yard, his clothes splattered with mud and his body smelling ripe with sweat, before he hoisted her up in his arms to embrace and she trembled under the onslaught of his virility.

She worried sometimes that she could not please her husband in the way he pleased her - not in bed, for she knew well how pleased he was by her _there_ \- but because she was young and untried in the world, and made a number of mistakes in her organisation of the household in the first few months, and because she had not undertaken her own travels and brought back stories to tell him as they sat before the fire. When he had sad moods, not unlike her father's, when she presumed him to be thinking of his lost family, she did her best to cheer him up by playing her harp for him or singing, by sitting in his lap and pressing kisses to his creased brow and his stubbled cheeks until he smiled and clutched her tightly to him and called her his dear little wife. He was happy with her, he told her when she expressed her worry, and he could think of no better companion than she.

 

They have journeyed back to Winterfell for a feast and she is amazed at thinking how different she is now from when she left, and she smiles wryly at the memory of her tearful protest when she had first heard she was to marry Benjen.

Her mother's anger has softened, as has her father's awkwardness at marrying her to his own brother, though the both of them seem uncomfortable, she thinks, with how close she and her husband are, with her mother frowning delicately as Benjen kisses her at the end of a dance and her father swiftly turning to talk to another man when Benjen tugs her down to his lap at the table before she blushes and swats him away.

Robb is too busy mooning over his betrothed to be more than polite, Bran and Rickon are young enough not to think about why it might be strange for their uncle to now be married to their sister, Arya seems to pretend they are not married at all, referring to him as _our uncle_ and screwing up her face any time Sansa mentions marriage, but Jon, who she had never been close to and who has returned from the south as a knight and a man grown, does not seem to approve of the match for she has spied him glowering strangely at the both of them.

But now as her husband spins her around the room, as his hands are firm about her waist and his smile is so very wicked, she pays no attention to her siblings, to the other people in the hall, she thinks only about the time they might spend together later, and the pleasures he might bring her.

 

**

 

Jon leaves the feast with a head thick with ale and with a sourness in his gut, hoping vainly to sleep off his ill humour. And yet worse is in store for him tonight, for as he walks along the passageway from the hall past the armoury he hears familiar murmured voices and when, instead of continuing on his journey, he ducks into an alcove and peers around the corner, he spies a giggling Sansa against the wall of the armoury with her husband whispering to her and pressing kisses across her face and neck, his hands pulling up her skirts.

That a man his age would act thus, that someone who knew how Sansa's reputation had been blemished would do such a thing— Jon watches with both dismay and shameful lust as his uncle falls to his knees and buries his head under her skirts, as Sansa tips her head back and bites her lip on pretty moans, squirming against the wall as her husband's hands hold her tight by the hips.

It is better that she has a husband who pleases her than one who does not, Jon knows that, but the jealousy he feels is so bitter and black he fears he will choke on it, and he flees for his room, slamming the door closed behind him and punching it with his fist, muffling his groan of pain in the blankets of his bed and refusing to slide a hand down his breeches for to do so would only make the whole thing more sordid and horrible.

The next morning, after too-few hours sleep, it is still roiling in his head, the picture of what he had seen, his outrage, and though he tells himself that he is simply offended on Sansa's behalf, that Benjen might touch her thus in a corridor where anyone might see, he knows the bulk of his anger is because he wishes it was him.

He lingers by the training yard, keeping an eye on the pathways to either side until his uncle appears late in the morning, smiling genially at all he passes.

"Uncle!" he calls, trying not to look too murderous, "spar with me?"

Benjen eyes him knowingly, which only stokes his anger. "Your weapon of choice?" Benjen asks, striding closer, dropping his cloak over an empty rack.

"Sword," Jon says, nodding to an uncertain-looking Rodrick Cassel who leads Rickon, who is waving his wooden sword about with abandon, further away.

"Live steel?" Benjen asks casually, tying on the vambraces he has picked up.

"Yes," Jon says tightly, watching his uncle remove his sword belt and unsheathe his sword.

Neither of them have greatswords like Ice, and neither of them have the broad form of one who could wield such a weapon. Benjen is slimmer than Ned, lighter on his feet, just as Jon is to Robb, and thought Benjen has many years of experience on him, Jon has been told by all he has fought in the south that he is one of the greatest swordsmen they have ever seen, praise which has gone some way to healing old wounds in his pride.

But he does not need to be the best swordsman who has ever lived now, he only needs to beat this man, to prove some point he does not even understand himself.

"To first blood then?" Benjen asks, "Will that satisfy you?" he says with a hint of mockery that makes Jon charge.

 

**

 

 _Oh, Lyanna_ , Benjen thinks, _just look at your boy, look at his wildness and his fury, look at your spirit that remains alive in him._

 _I shall not harm him, never you fear - with what I have heard I think I shall be the one worse off after this fight, except I shall still have my wife, his sister, the thing he covets most of all. Is it his Targaryen blood that makes him thus_ , he says to his sister in his head, as he parries and thrusts and whirls away from Jon's blows, their swords clashing loudly and bringing curious bystanders to the yard, _or is it the gods playing tricks on us again?_

 _Well, he may win the fight, but he shall not start a war, not this time, you have my_ _word_ , he thinks with a pang of sadness, marvelling anew at how Jon reminds him of his mother and of Rhaegar too, the both of their romantic, doomed, sensibilities held inside one sullen youth. Is it coincidence that made Jon become a knight after both his parents' example, or was his path set down for him before he was born?

"Do you always fight with your emotions so unleashed?" Benjen asks him as he ducks a wide sweep and gives Jon a shove in his chest so that the younger man staggers back, grunting angrily. "I thought knights were supposed to be calm and precise in their manner."

"I thought you were supposed to be honourable."

"Ha!" Benjen says, "I am not honourable because I borrow from street brawls?" he asks, as he kicks Jon in the ankle and then falls back.

"I saw you," Jon hisses, righting himself quickly, "last night."

Benjen sighs and grits his teeth under a heavy blow from Jon's sword, the echo of it sending a juddering ache through his shoulder. "What you saw was a husband and wife in love," he says simply, trying not to mock the poor boy, trying to treat him with the kindness due to a son of Lyanna.

"She has been dishonoured enough—"

"You call our marriage a dishonour? Watch yourself, boy," he says, thrusting sharply as Jon blocks his sword.

"Anyone could have seen."

"I debate that, I think you were spying on us, lurking where you should not have been."

Jon's attack picks up in pace and Benjen feels himself falter. He has known since the beginning that Jon will win this fight, but it does not make it easier to lose to one so much younger. _Am I old now, Lyanna, am I a weary shell of the brother you once knew?_

"Will it satisfy you to beat me, Jon," he groans as Jon pushes him further back, his sword arm smooth as if he is dancing, his eyes blazing with a fire inherited from both parents. "Will that soothe your hurt?"

Jon roars and slices his sword and with the next blow Benjen falls to his knees disarmed, panting and watching his nephew, whose swordpoint is still before him though the boy himself trembles with anger.

"To first blood then," Benjen murmurs. "I'm all yours, Jon," he tilts his head, opens his empty hands, and then Jon pushes him back by the shoulder and turns away.

"You're family," Jon says sullenly, his ribs heaving from the fight, "there should be no blood drawn between the two of us."

"I agree," Benjen says, groaning in pain as he stands.

The distant onlookers clap eagerly now, relieved that the strange tension has ended, being too far away to hear either man's words during the fight.

Jon turns back and holds out his hand. "A good fight," he says.

"You were well to choose the sword," Benjen remarks, shaking it and then untying his own vambraces, "for I fear I should have beaten you if it were fists alone, or one of the weapons I have seen in Essos. Take it from me," he tells this sullen mirror of Lyanna, this boy who longs for love and acceptance so desperately it makes Benjen hurt sometimes when he looks at him, "and do not trust solely in what a master-at-arms teaches you, or stick to conduct becoming of a knight, fight dirty, Jon," _survive where your father could not_.

"Aye," Jon says, calmer now and looking more like the boy who sat at Benjen's knee and begged to hear stories of his travels.

"Also, try visiting a brothel or two when you've left here, it's not good to leave things so pent up," Benjen jokes, unwilling to let go a chance to mock him, as Jon swears under his breath. "You were always my favourite nephew," Benjen calls out as Jon stalks back to the armoury.

"And you were my favourite uncle, once," Jon shouts back when he reaches the doorway, the sad note of truth in his jeer evident only to Benjen.

"Your only uncle," Benjen says to himself sadly, and sighs, brushing off the dust from his clothes and turning his thoughts to how Sansa will scold him for not changing clothes before he sparred.

Having a wife and settling in a keep of his own is a pleasing change from his previous life of travel and of lurking about Winterfell with no real position beyond his brother's advisor. Ned did not need advising in Winterfell affairs, nor in much else since he had Catelyn there to guide him, but Benjen dutifully offered what knowledge he could and did as his brother asked, going out to meet bannermen and to make alliances with those further afield on his behalf as Ned's children and heirs increased in number.

"When will you marry," Ned asked him every time he came home, "surely you're done with your travels now, surely you want a home?"

"This is my home," he would reply and Ned would sigh sadly.

The both of them knew that when Benjen fled from the north he fled too from memories of their sister, who haunted every part of Winterfell for him, even now. He ran as if he could run from her and from the tragedies he had been a guilty party to, and perhaps from Jon too, who had so much of his mother in him.

"And a wife?" Ned would ask.

"I am a picky man, brother," he would say and Ned would smile uncertainly.

There were some who thought that Benjen favoured men and that was why he had yet to marry but, though Benjen had tried his hardest in several unsatisfactory fumbles with other men during his travels, he knew that he was not built that way. He had loved women, had lingered in their homes, had thought of marrying them, but something always drew him onwards, some force he did not understand. And then, last year, when he was elsewhere in the North and he had heard the rumours of Sansa's defilement, he had ridden home with the strange thought that this was why he had yet to marry, that the gods had wished him to bide his time so he might come to her and his family's aid.

Whether that is true or not, it is true that he must now thank the gods for giving him such a sweet wife, and such a peaceful life. It was easier for him at first that she did not resemble a Stark, that she was all Tully, but by the time he was in love with her, it was her familiar qualities that made his heart sing - her father's seriousness, Brandon's stubbornness, Lyanna's wild joy and secret hungers. Yet she was not only a patchwork of all that had gone before, there was something all her own, a loving sweetness, a spark of something new that delighted him, that made him feel young. It did not hurt that she was such a good recipient of his gifts, a strangely uncommon quality to have; nor that she was so willing to enjoy herself in bed, so wanton in her abandon it made him groan to think of; nor that she loved listening to tales from his travels.

At the beginning, when she was shy and both of them were unused to marriage, it took some coaxing to get her to speak her fears, to explain her moods, but by now, seven moons in, he feels they know each other well.

He remembers her asking him, one morning in his solar as she fingered a figurine he had brought back from Meereen, whether he missed travelling, with the underlying tone one of worry that he would get bored and leave her.

"My travels are at an end and I happy to settle down," he said, holding her by the shoulders and gazing down at her eyes blue as the water of some southron sea, "I shall not run away and leave you, sweet wife. I made a promise and I shall keep it."

He honoured promises, he always had, like the promise he made to Lyanna that he would tell no one she was going to run away with Rhaegar, and the promise he made Ned to never tell Lyanna's son about his true parents. They are his burdens to bear, his duty to keep.

He is in the godswood the afternoon after the feast, thinking about those who once played here, those who are now lost, when Sansa finds him.

"I hear that you were beaten in a swordfight, husband," she says, teasing him with an impish smile that makes him pull her to him to kiss, one hand tangled in the hair she leaves loose because, he suspects, she knows how much he likes it.

But though she loves to kiss him, and has told him thus with shy blushes, today she seems distracted, her body tense. "Are you well?" he asks, drawing back, stroking a knuckle down her cheek.

She nods and bites her lip. "I have some news," she says, voice trembling.

He waits for her to gather her courage, a pang of anxiety in his gut, and she takes his hand and draws it down, placing it on her middle, and then pauses, waiting for him to fathom what she means.

"Sansa—" he says, all the aches and pains of the morning's fight vanished.

"I am with child," she says, and he sees a note of pride in her manner that thrills him.

"A child," he says, mind spinning ahead to a babe in her arms, to a toddling child he can teach to read and fight and ride a horse, to a son or daughter. "You have made me so happy," he says, kissing her on the forehead, glancing up to the red leaves of the heart tree that has stood sentry over so many Starks through the years.

"It is I who is the happiest of all," she says, and he presses a kiss to her trembling mouth.

"I do not think it is a competition," he teases as she hooks an arm around his neck.

"If it is, I shall win," she says stubbornly and he laughs and picks her up, spinning her around until both of them are dizzy .

 

**

 

"I heard the happy news, congratulations," Jon says a few days after the feast as he checks the saddle of his horse to leave, praying that Sansa does not see how pained he feels.

"Oh, Jon, I'm so happy," she beams and tips up on her toes to kiss his cheek, making his breath catch. "You must get wed and have your own children. Have you no love in the south waiting for your return?" she asks.

He is glad that she is still a romantic, that she has found happiness, even as it burns him that he is not the cause. That she is with child is the final nail in his foolish hopes - that her marriage is annulled, that he is somehow allowed to marry his half-sister - for he shall not be the craven who tears a child away from his father. It is done, she belongs to another and always shall and the knowledge rings in his head like the noise of a great bell.

"No," he says.

"Hmm," she says with a pretty frown - and how is it fair that she looks pretty when she frowns, he thinks, half bitter and half in awe - "I bet you have simply not noticed the women who are sighing over you from afar. Every woman loves a knight, Jon," she says.

"They do, do they," he says, trying not to push his luck.

She nods. "And when you next return you will have a niece or nephew to meet," she says shyly, eyes glazing over with the vision of some future happiness.

He had only ever wanted to be a true sibling to his brothers and sisters, a true Stark, and now that she is treating him like a dear brother it hurts. Such is his lot, he thinks, his eyes glancing to his uncle who leans against the wall of the keep watching them, his casual manner belying the fierceness with which he would protect Sansa were Jon or another to harm her. An understanding passes between uncle and nephew and Jon nods and turns back to Sansa, bowing in an exaggerated manner and kissing her hand as a proper knight should, as she laughs joyfully just like she did as a girl.

And then Jon turns to leave, heartsore and aching, knowing once and for all that there is no place for him in the north and that he must make his own home and life, as so many other bastards or third sons have done before. Surely somewhere in the Seven Kingdoms there shall be a woman to match his sister's place in his heart; it would be the very worst arrogance to think not.

A man must make his own path, his uncle used to tell him when Jon asked what he should do when he was grown, frustrating him when he had only wished to hear how Benjen pictured his future. And yet now he thinks it the very best of advice. _A man must make his own path_ , he murmurs under his breath and kicks his horse to a gallop, thundering down the road away from Winterfell.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please comment if you enjoyed this, I'd love to hear what people think! :)
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://fraamboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset for this fic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/176983304307/when-sansa-is-dishonoured-by-a-visiting-lord-her)


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